Chen Hui-Chiao's Under One Sky at gdm Hong Kong featured in ArtReview China, reviewed by Duan Qiuchen.
The exhibition opens with Wisława Szymborska’s poem Under One Small Star, composed in the 1970s. Confronting a heavy world, the Polish poet adopts an apologetic stance, weaving together the tangible and intangible— at once light-hearted and severe. This resonates with Chen Hui-Chiao's exhibition: in the face of cruel realities, the artist does not turn away. Distilling the beauty and complexity of everyday life, Chen conveys an intimate concern and empathy towards pain and suffering.
At this moment, the “distant wars” alluded to in the poem no longer feel so distant. From the screens at our fingertips, we can instantly learn of the calamities countless lives are enduring. Whether in Ukraine, or in the Middle East, skies are streaked with innumerable drones and missiles. After each bombardment, only ruins, wreckage, and the displaced remain. Under One Sky is an staunch and unflinching response to the cruelty of war. As its introduction declares, it is “not an act of contemplation but a reckoning. Chen Hui-Chiao refuses consolation; she demands confrontation.”
Now 62, Chen Hui-Chiao is a seminal figure in Taiwan’s contemporary art scene, and a co-founder of the alternative arts space IT Park. Her works often employ a concise visual language, engaging with everyday metaphors and historical critique. Her practice revolves around contradictions: hard and soft; longing and loss; the temporary and the enduring.
While contemporary artists readily engage in personal or local explorations of identity politics and power relations, Chen Hui-Chiao's decision to address the pressing challenges of our time might be seen as a somewhat old-fashioned insistence. Nevertheless, this universal concern reveals a certain rarity. Shifting our focus to a regional outlook—amidst escalating verbal intimidation, military secrecy, and cable sabotage—the exhibition offers local audiences an opportunity to reflect on their own pressing concerns. The exhibition underscores the importance of artistic creation to be rooted in the world we live in; that the most powerful reflections are those that honestly experience and contemplate the human condition. If artistic creation itself fails to engage and resonate with the wider public, it fails to enter the public sphere and withstand scrutiny, remaining confined to a small circle of self-circulation and obscure rhetoric. Its vitality inevitably faces critique.
Text translated from original in Chinese. Courtesy of ArtReview China.
Images: Chen Hui-Chiao, Under One Sky, gdm Hong Kong, 2026 (installation view). Photography by Felix Wong.
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